“Expands into a fluffy cloud when microwaved”

In yesterday’s New Yorker crossword puzzle, clue 27 Down was:

Brand-name bath bar that expands into a fluffy cloud when microwaved

I’ve already stated my claim to be the first person to try microwaving bars of soap, or at least the first person to publish the eye-opening results of the process on one well-known brand, in my 1993 book Soap Science.

But I haven’t mentioned that I told that story for a short comic drawn by Dan Mazur in the Boston Comics Roundtable anthology Boundless, edited by Olivia Li, Jordan Stillman, and Neil Johnson in 2016.

That comic includes depictions of me and my dad in the 1970s and 1990s. In fact, the editors told me that the script won them over as soon as it called for pictures of me as a child. 

“Outside the Box” Opening Reception in Jamaica Plain, 21 April

With friends from the Boston Comics Roundtable, I’m helping to organize an exhibit of comics art in the gallery of the Footlight Club, America’s oldest continuously running community theater. It’s on Eliot Street in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.

A few weeks back, a volunteer at that theater contacted our group about assembling a show. Its current production is Tuck Everlasting, a family musical based on Natalie Babbitt’s novel, so he wanted to showcase art that would appeal to kids.

Many B.C.R. members have created comics for kids, and co-founder Dan Mazur published Boston Powers, a comic book with short, local superhero stories. So there was a good talent pool to choose from.

The exhibit has ended up featuring thirteen artists, including Boston Powers contributors, folks publishing on their own on paper or the web, a couple of graphic novelists (Jonathan Todd, Jerel Dye), and even a picture-book artist who works in comics form (Lindsay Leigh).

I’m represented through the work of Brendan Tobin, with pages from our “Stupendo and Secret Girl” collaboration.

This Sunday, 21 April, at 1:00 PM we’ll have a reception to celebrate the exhibit before a matinee performance of the musical. The art will remain up before, during, and after every show for families to enjoy. 

The “Thomas Nast” Art Team, Part 3

Yesterday’s Boston Globe praised the approach of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s “Thomas Nast: A Life in Cartoons” online exhibit: “In a nice twist, the exhibition doesn’t emphasize Nast’s own work (though it offers links to many of his cartoons). Instead, nine contemporary cartoonists illustrate episodes from Nast’s life.”

I discussed six of those artists in the two preceding postings. Here’s the rest of the team.

Under Harper’s Weekly publisher Fletcher Harper, Nast had editorial freedom in the topics he chose and how he approached them. That often put him at odds with the magazine’s political editor, George William Curtis, who was more gentle and loyal to the Republican Party as a whole rather than just President U. S. Grant. We illustrated that conflict in what I later realized was yet another Nast-speaking-to-his-editor scene. But hey, his job was speaking to editors, and it’s a scene I know well.

The line “hit the enemy between the eyes” line came straight from Nast. The historical society understandably wanted more Massachusetts content, so this cartoon includes Nast’s unflattering caricatures of two Bay State politicians, Benjamin Butler and Charles Sumner.

The artist for this panel is Sam Cleggett. When the core team were thinking of cartoonists to recruit, two of the qualities we looked for were political work and visual style reminiscent of Nast. I pointed out, “Sam knows hatching,” and this energetic cartoon shows that he sure does. Sam also creates animation art for television and video games.

On top of his political cartoons, Thomas Nast’s biggest contribution to American culture was to popularize a certain look for Santa Claus. He had grown up with a German Christmas tradition of “Pelze-Nicol,” which he used to illustrate the Dutch tales of ”St. Nick” preserved in New York. Nast’s Santa was round and jolly, the size of a child, and swathed in fur.

For years Nast drew black and white pictures of Santa Claus for Harper’s. They became so popular that McLoughlin Bros., a pioneering picture-book publisher, offered to publish a book of Nast’s pictures converted to color lithographs. That technique approximated brown by printing black lines and highlights on a red field, with the result that the fur tinged toward red—and a red suit became what we expect Santa to wear.

Dan Mazur produced the cartoon of a McLoughlin brother showing Nast his page proofs for Santa Claus and His Works. As usual, he loaded it up with historical detail, hunting for the right sort of press and Pelze-Nicol himself.

Dan was also one of the organizers of this project, and he was one of the founders of both the Boston Comics Roundtable and the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo. His latest comic as a publisher is the Boston Powers series, and his upcoming comic as an author-illustrator is Lunatic.

After losing his editorial independence, Thomas Nast left Harper’s Weekly. He launched his own magazine, which lasted only a few months. He went on the lecture circuit, but that was exhausting. He produced history paintings looking back on the Civil War. His investments went bust, leaving him in a precarious financial state.

For our final cartoon, I imagined a cheeky take on the moment when Nast accepted a post in the U.S. diplomatic corps under Theodore Roosevelt. Artist Nick Thorkelson chose to render that in three panels to enhance the timing of the vaudeville dialogue. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so funny when Nast caught yellow fever only a few months after arriving at his first assignment. (We didn’t illustrate that moment.)

Nick Thorkelson has made political cartoons for the Boston Globe and many other outlets. One of his specialties is graphic biography, with his latest being Herbert Marcuse: Philosopher of Utopia (2019).

So that’s our look at the career of American cartoonist Thomas Nast, from his childhood immigration to his death overseas.

What the New Spider-Man Comes Home to

Back in 2014, it was widely reported that Captain America: The Winter Soldier was a superhero movie crossed with a 1970s political thriller. That’s why the sight of Robert Redford, star of Three Days of the Condor, All the President’s Men, and Brubaker, in the film was so resonant.

In the same way, I think Spider-Man: Homecoming as a superhero movie crossed with a 1980s high-school romantic comedy. The sort of movie on which John Hughes made his name. The genre that such other talents as Cameron Crowe, Martha Coolidge, Amy Heckerling, and Savage Steve Holland contributed to.

In the midst of the usual superpowered action and angst, there are a lot of laughs about the culture of high school, as seen from the student perspective. Adults are either petty tyrants or ineffectual scolds (even Captain America). High-school rituals like the morning news bulletin, homecoming dance, and academic decathlon are both laughable and life-or-death important. Everyone else seems to be having more fun.

In many ways, the high school in Spider-Man: Homecoming is a welcome update to the schools in those earlier movies and in the original Spider-Man comics. Peter Parker attends a high school devoted to science and technology, so by older standards everyone’s already a nerd. His rival Flash Thompson isn’t the football captain; he just has a big mouth and sharp tongue. And the student body is very ethnically diverse.

Spider-Man: Homecoming doesn’t seem shy about its cinematic pedigree. The movie even includes a clip from Hughes’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, an iconic example of the genre. The soundtrack features the Ramones, the English Beat, and A Flock of Seagulls. The homecoming dance has an ’80s theme, which would be exotic for characters born in this century but is nostalgic for some of this movie’s target audience.

My friend Dan Mazur has said that he used to enjoy Spider-Man comics and their common theme of “With great power there must also come—great responsibility!” But eventually he noticed that almost every story came back to “With great power there must also come—great responsibility!” And he began to think that comics should find more to say. [More on that here.]

That’s not the theme of this Spider-Man movie, however. It’s not an origin story, as in Amazing Fantasy, #15. We don’t see Peter Parker bit by the spider, we don’t see him try pro wrestling, we don’t see him ignore the burglar who kills his uncle. At no point does he really think about tossing everything away or just showing off, as Peter has occasionally done in the comics and previous movies.

Instead, when Spider-Man: Homecoming starts, Peter is already determined to take on great responsibilities as a costumed crimefighter. Indeed, he’s too eager. The major moment of character growth is actually stepping away from big, flashy responsibilities in favor of staying home. The Homecoming subtitle refers to how the story immediately follows from Captain America: Civil War, the high school dance, and Peter’s decision to focus on his own neighborhood.

The main theme of this Spider-Man is thus the same as those earlier high-school movies: stay true to yourself and your real friends, and you’ll get through this.

Will Eisner Week in Metro Boston

The Million Year Picnic comics shop, Stephen Weiner of the Maynard Public Library, the Cambridge Public Library, and folks from the Boston Comics Roundtable are collaborating on a local celebration of Will Eisner Week.

On Thursday, 6 March, the Cambridge library will host a conversation between two comics creators about Eisner’s art and legacy:

• Paul Hornschemeier, creator of Mother, Come Home; The Three Paradoxes; and the New York Times best seller Life with Mr. Dangerous, among other titles.
• Denis Kitchen, “underground comix” cartoonist, founder of Kitchen Sink Press and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and Eisner’s literary executor.

That event is said to be scheduled from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at the library. This will be followed by a signing at the Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square, which has a weeklong sale of Eisner books. (I just bought one using another discount.)

On Saturday, 8 March, several local comics creators will lead comics workshops for kids (and interested adults who bring kids along) at the Cambridge library. Those creators are Jef Czekaj, Josh Dahl, Bob Flynn, Dan Mazur, Dan Moynihan, Braden Lamb, and Shelli Paroline. Those workshops start at 12:30 PM and run for two hours. Afterwards, there will be another signing at the Million Year Picnic from 3:00 to 5:00 PM.

Introducing (One Version of) Dr. Megalo

A couple of weeks back, I linked to the Boston Comics Roundtable’s “Working Method” experiment, which this month is focused on a script I wrote called “Owl and Pussycat.” Different artists are sharing their character designs, layouts, and even finished pages.

As part of the exercise, I avoided specific details about the characters because I wanted to give the artists the widest latitude. And because the way I pictured those characters wasn’t original at all. When one of the artists, Mike Tomasulo, asked me what I had in mind for the villain Dr. Megalo, I had to admit I was imagining Sivana from the Captain Marvel comics.

But Mike’s question prompted me to push myself a little, and I gave him some more options for Dr. Megalo:

For instance, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson in an ugly plaid blazer. An attractive blonde woman whose face has been scarred in a lab accident. A spoiled young prodigy in an oversized lab coat. A Silicon Valley billionaire who hasn't worn a tie since his bar mitzvah.

And the next day I had another idea: basing the design of Dr. Megalo on Edward Lear, author of “The Owl and the Pussycat.” At the Thursday B.C.R. meeting I sketched out that idea. Dan Mazur inked it (while fixing some proportions) with a brush. And finally I added type while trying out Manga Studio.

Greatest “Between Good and Awesome”

Back in April, Brian Gardes at the Stumptown Literary Review provided a very nice review of The Greatest of All Time Comics Anthology:

As with most anthologies there were some stories which were more successful than others. However, under the careful eye of editors Dan Mazur and Jesse Lonergan, these variations in quality fluctuate between good and awesome. . . .

While it is often a risk to purchase an anthology, I cannot recommend The Greatest of All Time Comics Anthology enough. It has a solid creative line up, great production values (twenty color pages in a small press book?!?!), and an enjoyable read from cover to cover!

Braden Lamb and I collaborated on one story in that collection, “The Greatest Spy of All Time.” Braden and his wife, Shelli Paroline, won Eisner Awards this summer for their work on Adventure Time, so I can’t argue that this publication was the highlight of the past twelve months for him, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Ninth Art Press’s next comics anthology will be about subcultures; here’s the call for submissions.

Local Heroes

I won’t be attending MoCCA this year, but I’ll be represented at that independent comics festival by a couple of titles from Dan Mazur’s Ninth Art Press. One is The Greatest Comics Anthology of All Time, introduced back here.

And Geoff Halvorsen and I have a story in the inaugural issue of In a Single Bound, a magazine of eight short superhero comics set in Boston and hot off the press.

This tale is really Geoff’s baby. We were talking at a Boston Comics Roundtable meeting about his frustration with finding a structure for his visual ideas, so I listened and thought and came back with a story set at MIT. Dan, the magazine editor, provided great suggestions to make the result more “superheroey.” Geoff handled all the layout, art, and lettering. The result is the Tesla Club’s first tale, “The Infinite Corridor.”

Part of the point of In a Single Bound is that it’s not so “superheroey.” These are stories set in Boston, after all, not braggadocious New York or its other-universe avatars (Gotham, Metropolis). They tend toward the smart, skewed, and parodic. The parody might be directed at the superhero genre or the Hub itself. We’ll see how the collection fares in Manhattan this weekend before it flies back to home base for the Boston Comic-Con.

I Am [in] “The Greatest”!

A story I wrote makes its debut today in a new anthology from Ninth Art Press: The Greatest of All Time Comics Anthology, edited by Dan Mazur and Jesse Lonergan.

Opinion is divided as to whether this should claim to be the greatest comics anthology of all time, but it definitely collects twenty stories in 124 pages clustered around the theme of “The Greatest.” Topics include the greatest rock band of all time, the greatest conspiracy theory ever, and one creator’s argument for the greatest bruise. Most of the book is in black and white, but two stories are printed in full color.

I was very fortunate to have as a collaborator Braden Lamb, currently sharing the art chores on the Adventure Time comic book with his wife, Shelli Paroline. (I’m also impressed that Braden got to do some colors on Teen Boat!)

Our story is titled: “The Greatest Spy of All Time.”

Cold Wind and the Limits of the Superhero Genre

Cold Wind is a short adventure comic written by Dan Mazur and drawn by Jesse Lonergan, independently published by Mazur’s Ninth Art Press.

I saw this story grow from a script that Dan shared with the Boston Comics Roundtable to its final form. Dan writes in screenplay format, not breaking his story into pages and panels. Often he draws his own art, so that’s obviously not a problem. In this case, he left it up to Jesse—who’s scripted his own Flower and Fade, Joe and Azat, and other tales—to divide the screenplay into images. Yet another approach to collaboration.

Dan’s told me a couple of times how he’s no longer a fan of superhero comics because of their repetitive themes. He reads one Spider-Man story, learns that “With great power comes great responsibility,” reads another story—and learns the same thing.

As former Marvel editor Jim Shooter has commented:

Comic books have become like opera. You go to see a particular performance of an old story, not a new story. How will this performer handle that familiar role...?

That familiarity is part of the appeal of a series, or a genre.

At the last roundtable meeting, Dan wondered aloud if Cold Wind is a superhero comic. I said it qualified, despite his ambivalence about the genre. It’s a pumped-up action story taking place against a fantastic landscape. Its characters are largely symbolic, and they work out the fate of the world through violence.

But Cold Wind reflects Dan Mazur’s take on the superhero genre, with the theme that things don’t change significantly. For all the adventure’s sound effects and fury, its surviving characters achieve only a short pleasure before the world spins on.

Cold Wind is on sale today at the MoCCA Festival, in the better Boston-area comics shops, and over the web.